an insatiable appetite for my region by VINCENT NATTRESS

Why Heritage Turkeys?

Here is a video of the four remaining Narragansett Turkeys we have here at our home on Whidbey Island. We got a dusting of snow and the temperatures have been below freezing for several days, but the turkeys are unfazed. So what? Well, 99.9% of all turkeys produced for food in the world are not heritage breeds like these birds, they are one particular hybrid breed called broad breasted white, and those birds would be turkeycicles under conditions like these. The Narragansetts have the option of hanging out in their coop with a heat lamp, but they choose to forage and frolic and play in the snow. They are just more vigorous and healthy than the hybrids.

We have made a devil’s bargain with the poultry we raise for food. We have chosen the speed with which the animals grow and their feed conversion – the ratio of the amount of food the birds eat to the body weight of the animal – over pretty much all other factors. The one other factor is color: white feathers means a bird that appears cleaner when plucked, because any unplucked follicles are full of white feather parts not colored feather parts.

When you choose for conversion rate you get birds that mature really fast, but the bird’s skeletal structure and internal organs do not grow that much faster. As a result the birds suffer from broken bones and buckled joints as their immature bones try in vain to support their gargantuan weight. These birds also have a much higher ratio of white meat because of two factors: they are too fat to move effectively and their hearts and lungs are too small to effectively oxygenate their muscle tissue. Nice right?

We need to be clear about one other thing when it comes to “Heritage Breed” animals we are not talking about some exotic critters. To the contrary, these are Standard Breeds, literally the standard, accepted, common breeds that all farmers raised until about 60 years ago when the hybrids appeared. They were the birds that had proven themselves as truly sustainable, year after year, in good weather and bad, in lean years and in bountiful years, by generation after generation of farmers. In other words, these were the birds that sustained us.

My birds do not grow as fast and they eat a lot more, but they use some of the calories from the food they eat to do things like forage for their own food, explore, play, be inquisitive, interact with one another and mate. They are, in short, a real, complete, fully expressed creature that is capable of sustaining itself without me. What a concept. And did I mention that they taste really delicious too?

Wouldn’t you rather eat something that you know was healthy? Just a thought.

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4 Responses

Great article – As soon as I have some more land, I would like to raise my own as well.
Using your recipe, I brined my turkey overnight and my gravy was the saltiest it’s ever been…I washed the bird well and followed your ratios…ideas?

Jamie,
I have heard this from one other person too, and it puzzles me. I make the stock for the gravy from the un-brined backbone and neck of the turkey, so that had no salt. When the bird is roasted, the drippings in the pan are mostly fat, and while they may well be saltier than the drippings form an unbrined bird, they should in no way be so salty that they over salt the finished gravy, because again, the base stock that makes up the majority of the volume of the gravy has no salt.
Did you use bouillon or canned turkey stock? If so, that is quite high in salt and may be the problem.
V

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Welcome

This blog is an exploration of my region's food, season by season. I will focus on foraging, farming and how to cook what I find. I will also discuss food politics and the history of what we eat and why.

Foraging often reveals traditions that make this region unique. I will do my best to remind us of some of these vanishing traditions, because they reveal a lot about our cultural history.

Agriculture shapes the landscape we live in. Right now farming is undergoing a critical transition. More than ever we all need to understand the importance of diverse, regional food production, for what it means to our region, our bucolic surroundings, the safety and stability of our food system and our own personal health.

Exploring these food issues reveals a lot about our environmental and economic issues too. I will ask questions about the ways in which we are changing our food systems and how, as a result, our food is changing us.

This is a bountiful area, but also a changing area, and population growth, environmental degradation and vanishing food traditions threaten to change the way we feed ourselves forever.

Food is a lens through which to view where we are and how we got here. Because of this we can begin to ask the question about what to do next, so that we can live our lives more deliciously while leaving something behind that is worthy of the next generation.